In this article I’ll be guiding you through the third episode in Shaykh Munaf’s series of Arabic conversations. This episode starts with Shaykh Munaf (مناف munaaf) telephoning Abdur Rahman (عبد الرحمان ʕabd ir-raḥmaan). Here’s the video: The action in these videos takes place in Trinidad, which is why Abdur Rahman answers the phone with an …

“Making apologies” is a video in ArabicPod101’s “Arabic in 3 Minutes” series. In it, presenter Carole teaches you how to ask someone if they speak your language. This video is rather easy and introduces relatively little new material, so this article will also be rather short. Here is the video: Getting someone’s attention Carole introduces …

In this article I’ll be guiding you through the third episode in Shaykh Munaf’s series of Arabic conversations. This episode starts with Shaykh Munaf (مناف munaaf) running into Abdur Rahmaan (عبد الرحمان ʕabd ir-raḥmaan), who, again, is dragging a suitcase. Here’s the video: Munaf asks Abdur Rahman where he is coming from, using this phrase: …

In this article we’ll be looking at how to talk about eating in Arabic, especially with respect to the verbs that are used and the names of the meals. The basics The most basic word meaning to talk about eating in Arabic is يأكل ya’kul ‘to eat’. Here are the singular forms of this verb …

Shaykh Munaf (الشيخ مناف shaykh munaaf) has a series of well-produced videos with Arabic conversations that are appropriate for the beginning or intermediate learner. Here are links to all of them. I have already produced pages with commentary on the first couple of them. More will follow, إن شاءَ الله ’in shaa’ al-laah. Episode 1. …

In this post I’ll be guiding you through the second episode in Shaykh Munaf’s series of Arabic conversations. This episode starts with Shaykh Munaf (مناف munaaf) running into Abdur Rahmaan (عبد الرحمان ʕabd ir-raḥmaan), who is dragging a suitcase. Here’s the video: You probably already know the greeting السلام عليكم ’as-salaamu ʕalay-kum ‘peace be on …

This article will discuss Episode 1 of Shaykh Munaf’s series of Arabic conversations. This one is very simple and goes very slowly, but there are probably some words and expressions used in it that you aren’t familiar with. Here is the video: The conversation here is between Munaf (مناف munaaf) and Abdur Rahmaan (عبد الرحمان …

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the refrain of a famous song by Afaf Radi (عفاف راضي ʕafaaf raaḍii). It’s a nationalistic song, and sung in Egptian Arabic rather than Standard Arabic, but it’s a well-known, singable song with some phrases in it that are easy for the beginning learner of Arabic. …

You may know that Arabic has three grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, and accusative. There are two different issues at hand when discussing case. The first is what the different forms look like, and the second is what contexts are the different contexts they are used in. Let’s look at both of these very briefly. What …

ArabicPod101.com is a site with hundreds of short instructional videos for learners of Arabic. There is material available for all different levels. I have read very positive reviews about this service, and the paid subscription, which gives you access to all the videos and also to accompanying printed material, seems to be a good deal. …